Category Archives: Discworld

The Compleat Discworld Atlas
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, The Discworld Emporium
Release year: 2015
Publisher: Doubleday

Why in Database: Of course, the DiscWorld Atlas must have some turtle pieces – although in the textual layer there are few of them, and in the literal sense, none at all! They appear only in the table describing Krull: ““Exports: Star charts, chelonauts and shipwrecked people who are allowed home when the ransom is paid “, so it is an indirect mention (chelonauts), two pages later, an analogous mention of chelo-cosmology takes place: ““The country is ruled by the Arch-astronomer and Astrozoology is the best-funded department in their small but competent university. They have launched several missions over the Edge to explore what lies beneath and are acknowledged experts in the field of chelo-cosmology. ”

However, graphic elements are better – first of all, we get a huge two-sided map on which, on the one hand, the world of the disc is presented in the form of a geo-political map, and on the other side, a we have a big A’Tuin (see below). The turtle also appears on the front and back cover. There are also two pictures of a turtle inside, one with A`Tuin and one in an article about Omnia, the turtle is a tiny fragment of larger artwork. All graphics are shown below.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: Wit and Wisdom of Discworld
Author(s): Terry Pratchett (original author of the text), Stephen Briggs (he selected quotes)
Release year: 2007
Publisher: Doubleday

Why in Database: This book is a collection of the best (according to the selection, Stephen Briggs) fragments from all discworld books released before publication of this book, that is from The Colour of Magic to Making Money. Except for two fragments from the Small Gods (which are so full of turtle elements that there had to be a strict selection for the purposes of a note about them), all the other quotes had already appeared in TurtleDex, in the entries about individual books. The book is divided into chapters, quotations from one book are one chapter.

The Colour of Magic:

There was, for example, the theory that A’Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics.
An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

Sourcery:

There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.

Pyramids:

He knew about tortoises. There were tortoises in the Old Kingdom. They could be called a lot of things—vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs—but never, up until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it.

Guards! Guards!:

Eventually Great A ’Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical re-thinking of the nature of Time.

Small Gods (the first two quotes are not present in our note) :

“It’s a big bull,” said the tortoise.
“The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!” said Brutha
proudly. “And you say you’re him?”
“I haven’t been well lately,”

“How should I know? I don’t know!” lied the tortoise.
“But you…you’re omnicognisant,” said Brutha.
“That doesn’t mean I know everything.”
Brutha bit his lip. “Um. Yes. It does.”

Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves.”

Carpe Jugulum:

The Prophet Brutha said that Om helps those who help one another.”
“And does he?”
“To be honest, there are a number of opinions of what was meant.”
“How many?”
“About one hundred and sixty, since the Schism of ten-thirty A.M., February twenty-third. That
was when the Re-United Free Chelonianists (Hubward Convocation) split from the Re-United Free
Chelonianists (Rimward Convocation). It was rather serious.”
“Blood spilled?” said Agnes. She wasn’t really interested, but it took her mind off whatever
might be waking up in a minute.
“No, but there were fisticuffs and a deacon had ink spilled on him.”

The Last Hero (in the book, the second quote is longer, but we selected only this turtle fragment):

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That’s the advantage of space. It’s big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There’s nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there’s a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere.

“I don’t know,” said Carrot. “You know, I’m not sure I ever really believed it before. You know… about the turtle and the elephants and everything. Seeing it all like this makes me feel very… very…”

Author: XYuriTT

Title: A Slip of the Keyboard
Author(s): Terry Pratchett
Release year: 2014
Publisher: Doubleday

Why in Database: This book is a collection of texts that Pratchett wrote over the years, essays, texts for various magazines, speeches that he made or someone read on his behalf at conventions, etc. Almost the entire first text is about turtles, but we chose to skip the large non-turtle pieces and present it in four smaller pieces.)

As noted above, the first four fragments are taken from the text Thought Progress, which describes the beginning of the plot ideas for Small Gods:

Post arrives. One letter on Holly Hobbie notepaper, asking for a signed photograph. All right, all right, let’s do some research. What we need to know for the purposes of the next Discworld plot is something about tortoises. Got vague idea that a talking tortoise is essential part of the action. Don’t know why; tortoises just surfaced from racial unconsciousness. Possibly prompted by own tortoises surfacing from hibernation and currently doing Bertrand Russell impersonations in the greenhouse.
Find book on tortoises in box in spare room..”>1

Interesting footnote in tortoise book reminds us that most famous tortoise in history must be the one that got dropped on the head of famous Greek philosopher … what’s the bugger’s name? Very famous man, wherever the tortoise-dropping set get together. Sudden pressing desire to explore this whole issue, including what the tortoise thought about it all. Keep thinking it was Zeno, but am sure it wasn’t.
Finding out that it was Aeschylus occupies twenty minutes. Not philosopher, but playwright. In his hands, early drama took on a high-religious purpose, serving as a forum for resolving profound moral conflicts and expressing a grandeur of thought and language. And then a high-pitched whistling noise and good night. Look up Zeno out of interest. Ah, he was the one who said that, logically, you couldn’t catch a tortoise..”>2

Wonder why the eagle dropped the bloody thing on the playwright. It couldn’t have been to smash it open, like the book says. Eagles not daft. Greece is all rock, how come eagle with all Greece to choose from manages pinpoint precision on bald head of Aeschylus? How do you pronounce Aeschylus, anyway?.”>3

Start wondering, perhaps not eagle’s fault after all, it just had job to do, it had been flying too many missions, jeez, you get thrown out of eagle air force if you start worrying about the innocent philosophers you’re dropping your tortoises on. Hatch-22. No.
Stare at screen.
No. It was obviously tortoise’s idea all along. Had grudge against playwright, perhaps tortoises had been insulted in latest play, perhaps offended at speed-ist jokes, perhaps had seen tortoiseshell spectacles: you dirty rat, you got my brother. So hijacked eagle, hanging on to desperate bird’s legs like the tortoise in the old Friends of the Earth logo, giving directions in muffled voice, vector 19, beepbeepbeep, Geronimooooo.…
Stare at screen.
Wonder if eagle has anything else a desperate tortoise could hang on to. Look up biology of birds in encyclopedia in box on stairs. Gosh. Supper. Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can’t be playwright, what sort of person would tortoises instantly dislike?.”>4

The next piece comes from the text No Worries where Terry mentions his trip to Australia and signing books:

One lady has made me an entire box of origami turtles. No worries..”>5

In the Straight from the Heart, via the Groin, Terry explains what he is proud of in his work:

The books I’m really most proud of having written are the children’s books. It was brought home to me today when I was talking to the kids, why this is. They started asking about the turtles. Then they continued asking about the turtles. And I said, “Okay, no turtle questions.”
They said: “Okay, well, about the elephants then …”.”>6

In Discworld Turns 21 Pratchett mentions species of turtle named after him:

My name’s been given to an extinct species of turtle, and various characters are commemorated in the Latin names of small plants and, I think, insects..”>7

There are two references to A’Tuin in Whose Fantasy Are You?:

I write about people who live on the Discworld, a world that’s flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle. .”>8

(They might be—the last I heard, physicists have discovered all these extra dimensions around the place which we can’t see because they’re rolled up small; and you don’t believe in giant world-carrying turtles?).”>9

In DOCTOR WHO? Author again (there are some repetitions of this type in various texts, after all, each of them constituted a separate whole, only this book collected them) mentions turtle species named after him:

They’ve taken me around the world a dozen times, I’ve had a species of turtle (an extinct species, I’m afraid) named after me, and I think I’ve signed more than three hundred thousand books;.”>10

Author: XYuriTT

Title: The Folklore of Discworld
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, Jacqueline Simpson
Release year: 2008
Publisher: Doubleday

Why in Database: This book takes a look at various “things” used by Pratchett in his Discworld series. The most important and interesting part for TD is definitely the piece about A’Tuin, in this large fragment we have an interesting overview of the meaning of turtles in earthly folklore and mythology. In general, there are ten turtle fragments, we shown all of them below, most of them mentioning turtles in the Discworld context.

The first is a mention of a woman waiting in line for an autograph (not for herself) and her approach to Discworld:

She herself never, ever read novels of any kind, let alone Fantasy fiction. ‘I only want facts. What’s the point of reading about things that aren’t real? As for a world flying through space on a turtle…’

Short fragment about the nature of the Discworld:

The other is round-like-a-plate, and is moved at a more sedate pace by a team of elephants and a turtle. This is the Discworld.

The aforementioned long piece about turtles in earthly terms (with reference to Turtles all the way down):

THE ELEPHANTS AND THE TURTLE
The absolutely central, incontrovertible fact about the Discworld is that it is a disc. At least, it’s incontrovertible unless you adhere to the Omnian religion, in which case you must controvert it like billy-o. This disc rests upon four gigantic elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen), whose bones are living iron, and whose nerves are living gold. These elephants themselves stand upon the shell of the Great A’Tuin, a ten-thousand-mile-long star turtle, which is swimming through space in a purposeful manner. What this purpose may be, is unknown.
A child once asked, ‘Why does the Turtle swim?’
A wise man replied, ‘Child, there is no Why. IT … IS … SO.’
And that could be said of many things.
On Earth ‘everyone knows’ that people used to believe that their planet was also flat, if they thought about it at all. In fact for several thousand years a growing number of educated people have shared the knowledge that it is a globe. Generally speaking it was wisest not to shout about it in the street, though, because of the unrest this could cause. No doubt scholars in the ancient Hindu India partook of this knowledge, but since truth comes in many forms, the age-old epic poems of India declare the world to be a disc.
Further details of Hindu cosmology vary. According to one myth, there are four (or eight) great elephants named the diggaja or di gaja, ‘elephants of the directions’, guarding the four (or eight) compass points of this disc, with a type of god called a lokapala riding on the back of each one. But the oldest texts do not claim that they carry the world. According to another myth, however, the world rests on the back of a single elephant, Maha-Padma, and he is standing on a tortoise named Chukwa.
Finally, it is said in yet another myth that the god Vishnu once took on the form of a vast tortoise or turtle (k rma), so huge that Mount Meru, the sacred central mountain of the world, could rest on his back and be used as a stick to churn the ocean. At some stage, though nobody knows just when, these insights began to blend, with the result that some (but not all) Hindu mythographers now say the world is a disc supported by four elephants supported by a turtle.
Variations of the myth spread out from India to other areas of the globe.1 One that has proved particularly popular involves an infinite regression of turtles. It is said that an arrogant Englishman once mocked a Hindu by asking what the turtle stood on; untroubled, the Hindu calmly replied, ‘Ah, Sahib, after that it’s turtles all the way down.’2 Another variation, briefly mentioned in the film A Thief of Baghdad, involves different creatures but is of value because it adds one vital factor, that of movement. It tells how the world rests on seven pillars, carried on the shoulders of a huge genie, who stands on an eagle, which perches on a bull, which stands on a fish – and this fish swims through the seas of eternity.
Chinese mythology also knows of an immense cosmic turtle, but with a difference. According to the Chinese, our world is not balanced upon the creature’s back (with or without elephants), but is sloshing about inside it. Its plastron contains the oceans upon which all our continents are floating, and when we look up at the dome of the night sky we are seeing the inside of its vast carapace, studded with innumerable stars.
Clearly, fragments of information have drifted through the multiverse and taken root here and there. But the full and glorious Truth is known only on the Discworld. The Turtle Moves!

1.And some may be locally grown. Humanity seems predisposed to see the turtle as a massive carrier.
2. Yes, we know that there are several versions of this story!

Another mention of a turtle in the context of the Discworld:

Yet the legend itself poses great problems. If the Four Elephants mark the four quarters, where did the Fifth stand? Centrally, to form the pattern known as a quincunx? If it slipped and fell from the Turtle’s back, how could it strike the Disc – did it fall upwards?

Fragment about Om from Small Gods, one of Vishnu’s avatars is also mentioned:

The priests also claim that Om made the world, and revealed to them that it is not a disc carried by a turtle, but a perfectly smooth ball moving in a perfect circle round the sun, which is another perfectly smooth ball; this has become a vital dogma in the Omnian Church. Actually, Om now denies that he ever said this, or that he made the world – and if he had, he says, he wouldn’t have made it as a ball. Silly idea, a ball. People would fall off. Come to that, Om has only very vague memories of having met any prophets, and doesn’t recognize the things he is supposed to have said to them.
Om’s views on these matters are known because he spent three years or so in the world in the form of a tortoise. This was an embarrassing accident. He had meant to manifest himself briefly in some suitably impressive avatar – most likely, a bull – but what he got was a tortoise. Not a vast mountainbearing tortoise such as the Hindu god Vishnu once chose, but a mere common-or-garden tortoise.

Another fragment about Om, also about Aeschylus, another famous case of “throwing turtles”:

To make matters worse, Om-as-tortoise found his physical life in danger. Far too many people he met knew that ‘there’s good eating on one of those’. He was also being hunted by an eagle who had found out that if you carry off a tortoise in your talons and drop it on a rock from a great height, the result is a shattered shell and a rather fiddly meal. If, on the other hand, you drop it on somebody’s head, then you are recreating the Earth legend which claims that the Ancient Greek Dramaist Aeschylus was killed when a flying eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, mistaking it for a rock.
That eagles in some places have learned to drop tortoises in order to crack them open has been attested to by various sources, and our suspension of disbelief in a bird’s ability to target humans in the course of breaking its lunch was occasioned by a Daily Telegraph obituary of Brigadier John Mackenzie. In the Second World War he worked with partisans in the mountains of Greece, and ‘… on one occasion a brigade rifle meeting on a mountain was disrupted when a flock of vultures carrying various small tortoises in their talons decided to drop them on the mountainside to crack their shells. Two soldiers sustained fractured skulls from the tortoises and there were other injuries; the meeting was abandoned.’
Om has been affected by his spell as a humble tortoise.

Another fragment is a quote directly from one of the footnotes from Sourcery, a description of Chimera:

It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane. [Sourcery]

Mention of the events from book Pyramids:

Furthermore, Teppic had recently visited Ephebe, where he had heard the philosopher Xeno expounding his famous logical proof that if you shoot an arrow at a tortoise you cannot possibly hit it.

Quoted fragment from Jingo and a comment regarding the real world:

‘It puts me in mind,’ said Leonard, ‘of those nautical stories of giant turtles that sleep on the surface, thus causing sailors to think they are an island. Of course, you don’t get giant turtles that small.’ [Jingo]
In our world, in the absence of any turtles larger than, say, a decent-sized dining-table, traditional nautical lore warns instead of the risks involved in landing on a really, really big fish or whale which happens to be dozing on the surface.

The last fragment, a bit of Latin:

In Cambridge University Library and in the British Library there are manuscripts of a Latin Bestiary (that is, a Book of Beasts) dating from the early twelfth century. It includes a section about the sea-monster which gets mistaken for an island, beginning thus: There is an ocean monster which is called an aspido delone in Greek. On the other hand, it is called an aspido testudo in Latin. It is also called a Whale … This animal lifts its back out of the open sea above the watery waves … [transl. T. H. White]
Testudo is Latin for ‘tortoise’. Delone makes no sense, and must be a mistake for chelone, which is indeed a Greek word, meaning ‘turtle’. Why on earth should English monks a thousand years ago get the traditional whale mixed up with tortoises and turtles? Some echo from the Discworld, maybe? As for aspido, this must refer to a snake of some sort, so it would seem that the Sea Serpent has somehow got into the mix. It makes a good yarn even better.

Author: XYuriTT